The tables in bookstores can be overwhelming: Every book cover looks appealing, every blurb glows with praise. Sometimes, you just need a recommendation from a human, someone you trust. Below, 10 members of the TED community — with very different points of view — share the books they think you’ll enjoy this summer. Their selections are wonderfully untethered to new releases and bestsellers, with a little something for everyone.

Books on art and race, picked by Anne Pasternak

TED attendee Anne Pasternak will be the next director of the Brooklyn Museum, making her the first woman to lead one of New York’s encyclopedic art museums. For the past two decades, she’s directed Creative Time, staging artistic happenings in the wilds of New York City. Her recommendations focus on art, as well as on the legacy of slavery and racism:

Who We Be: The Colorization of America by Jeff Chang. “Don’t let the textbook look of this book stop you, because it’s awesome. No one writes more beautifully about race and culture than Jeff, the author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. Only he can make topical discussions of race and art into a page-turner.”

12 Years a Slaveby Solomon Northup. “When filmmaker Steve McQueen told me this book was about to become [suggested] reading in our public school curriculum, I almost burst into tears. Bravo for art impacting education! Now that it’s on our school reading list, it should be on ours as well.”

Nick Cave: Epitomeby Nick Cave et al. “In this brand-new coffee-table book, Nick Cave’s beaded and feathered Soundsuits pop off the page. You can almost feel these gorgeous creatures dancing around you. I confess that I haven’t read the essays yet, simply because the pictures are just so captivating.”

Art Studio America: Contemporary Artist Spaces edited by Hossein Amirsadeghi and Maryam Homayoun Eisler. “In this book, you get a glimpse at the creative spaces of some of America’s leading artists, like Chuck Close, Rachel Feinstein and Kiki Smith.”

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street by John Brooks. “Warren Buffett recommended this book to me in 1991, and it’s still the best business book I’ve ever read. Brooks offers sharp insights into the timeless fundamentals of business — like the challenge of building a large organization, hiring people with the right skills and listening to customers’ feedback.”

On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss. “Eloquent essayist Eula Biss uses the tools of literary analysis, philosophy and science to examine the speedy, inaccurate rumors about childhood vaccines that have proliferated among well-meaning American parents. Biss took up this topic not for academic reasons, but because of her new role as a mom.”

Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization by Vaclav Smil. “In this book, Smil examines the materials we use to meet the demands of modern life — like cement, iron, aluminum, plastic and paper. The book is full of staggering statistics: for example, China used more cement in just three years than the US used in the entire twentieth century. Smil is an original thinker who never gives simple answers to complex questions.”

How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff and Irving Geis. “First published in 1954, this book doesn’t feel dated, aside from a few anachronistic examples. (It’s been a long time since bread cost five cents a loaf.) In fact, it’s more relevant than ever. One chapter shows you how visuals can be used to exaggerate trends and give distorted comparisons. A timely reminder, given how often infographics show up in your Facebook and Twitter feeds these days.”.

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Incredible interviews, picked by Dave Isay

Dave Isay of StoryCorps, the winner of the 2015 TED Prize, has centered his life around the art of the interview — where stories of everyday individuals are surfaced and the gift of listening is given. His recommendations, naturally, gravitate toward magical conversations:

Up in the Old Hotelby Joseph Mitchell. “The astounding collection of profiles from a legendary The New Yorker writer. Too many good stories to list, but I named my daughter after ‘Mazie,’ his profile of the foul-mouthed ticket taker/bouncer/angel of a low-rent movie theatre catering to homeless men in New York.”

They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Mayer Kirshenblatt. “Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett spent forty years interviewing her father about the Polish town where he grew up. After decades of prodding, Mayer — a retired house painter — picked up a brush and began painting his memories of the town as well. The book creates a singular portrait of a world wiped off the face of the earth.”

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman. “In this graphic novel — one of the greatest works of the twentieth century, in my opinion — Spiegelman interviews his father about living through the Holocaust.”

The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridgeby Gay Talese. “An ode to the men who built the Verrazano-Narrows, it centers around the question, ‘Who are the high-wire walkers wearing boots and hard hats, earning their living by risking their lives in places where falls are often fatal and where the bridges and skyscrapers are looked upon as sepulchers by the families and coworkers of the deceased?’”

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemptionby Bryan Stevenson. “I’m currently reading this autobiography. As Bryan Stevenson said in his TED Talk: ‘We will ultimately not be judged by our technology; we won’t be judged by our design; we won’t be judged by our intellect and reason. Ultimately, you judge the character of a society by how they treat the poor, the condemned, the incarcerated.’ This book is not to be missed.”

Haunting novels, picked by Ava DuVernay

Ava DuVernay directed Selma, nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture this year. And this TED attendee is also a big reader. Her recommendations are all about beautiful, heartfelt fiction:

Rubyby Cynthia Bond. “Oprah recommended this book to me, and it is astounding. The writer has such a majestic command of language; she catapults everyday words into rare air with lines that sear into your memory. The characters Ruby and Ephraim shimmer with vibrancy — they show the complications of pain and joy, all messily and beautifully together. A total triumph.”

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. “This book scans the terrain of the personal, the political and the spiritual in incredible ways. The fact that so many millions of people have related to Estha and Rahel — twins in Kerala, India‎ — illustrates the power of storytelling and the fact that within cultural specificity lies a gorgeous universality.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. “Written in 1937 by a black woman artist extraordinaire, this treasure breathes with awe, ache and everything in between. Zora Neale Hurston’s prose is legend. Her story is epic, but her approach is intimate. I can’t say enough about this work.”

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. “A small novel filled with massive ideas, wrapped in language that allows us to taste and smell a whole new life — one as a tourist experiencing the beauty of Antigua and unaware of the indignities required to make such a visit possible. It’s about colonialism, patriarchy‎ and injustice and pushes the reader to examine their own ideas, expectations and identity.”.

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Books on historical moments, picked by David Rothkopf

Foreign policy thinker David Rothkopf gave a talk at TED2015 — an experience that flipped his thinking. His book recommendations are for those interested in history, as well as on its influence on the present:

Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick. “If I could have written one book in my life, it would probably be this one. One of the best combinations of storytelling, history writing and analysis that I have seen, about the end of the Soviet Union.”

Joan of Arc: A History by Helen Castor. “I’m fascinated by Joan of Arc and, until recently, by the lack of a really good, modern biography of her. This book fills that void. It tells the story of one of those extraordinary lives that, even when stripped of mythologies, mesmerizes because it illustrates how single individuals can make a difference.”

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore. “This book is about the man who invented Wonder Woman, and the women around him who reflected historical changes in the role of women in society. It’s smart and funny, a refreshing look into a corner of cultural history that I would never have thought to explore.”

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis. “Michael Lewis is one of the best at telling a compelling story about a few people — and in so doing, opening up a window into big issues of our times. He also knows and writes about finance better than any of his peers. The result: a book that proves how the financial system is just as rigged and corrupt as you thought it was.”

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovationby Jon Gertner. “My dad worked at Bell Labs, and my first summer jobs were there as well. It epitomized the power of pure research, and showed how big science and big government could collaborate. It is gone now, and its disappearance raises many questions about our future.”

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. “This is the last novel I read. It’s the story of a Nigerian woman who comes to America and then returns home, full of culture shock and self-discovery. It’s beautifully done and will have you looking at the world around you in a very different way.”

Books on creativity, picked by Tony Fadell

At TED2015, Tony Fadell — the man behind the iPod and Nest — managed to turn an observation about the little stickers on fruit that you inevitably forget to peel off before eating into an intriguing TED Talk. His book recommendations focus on the bounds of creativity:

Thinking, Fast and Slowby Daniel Kahneman. “Kahneman is brilliant. His latest book offers a fascinating look at how our brains work, and how they push us to act in ways that aren’t always in our best interest.”

The Art of War by Sun Tzu. “It’s hard to believe that a 2,000-year-old book could still be relevant for businesses today, but Sun Tzu’s masterpiece is as applicable to the world we live in as ever.”.

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Books on privacy, picked by Christopher Soghoian

TED Fellow Christopher Soghoian is a privacy researcher whose unsettling research suggests that we are just seeing the start of government surveillance. His recommendations are perfect for those interested in security:

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. “Released the same year as the March on Washington, Baldwin — an openly gay black male writer and intellectual — offers a torching perspective on being black in America.”

Sula by Toni Morrison. “Everything Morrison writes is gold, but Sula is one of those books that I return to every few years and I always find new nuggets of wisdom in it. The novel traces the sisterhood between Sula and Nel, and the diverging paths their lives take.”

Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith. “It’s the only nonfiction collection from one of my favorite contemporary writers. Smith covers pop culture, race, representation and literary analysis, including an ode to my favorite novel of all time, Their Eyes Were Watching God.”.

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Thought-provoking fiction, picked by Nadia Goodman

TED’s social media editor Nadia Goodman is a celebrity, at least in our office, for her stellar book recommendations. On her Instagram channel Tiny Book Reviews, she sums up books in well-wrought paragraphs alongside snapshots of the books in the perfect environment. Her latest recommendations:

The Transcriptionist by Amy Rowland. “A lonely woman in New York City, the last transcriptionist at a major newspaper, discovers a story she can’t forget. It’s a quiet, beautifully observed book about who gets remembered, who gets forgotten and how we decide whose stories deserve to be told. One of my favorite finds in a long time.”

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi. “A loose retelling of Snow White, set in New England in the mid-1900s. It’s a brilliant exploration of beauty, race, identity and the pain we inflict on others to protect ourselves. The ending is just …*mind blown.*”

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill. “I devoured this book in one sitting. It’s insightful, heartbreaking, brutally honest and peppered with such a dry sense of humor that I found myself laughing out loud. More than anything, it humanized the trials of love and marriage.”

Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones. “A gut-wrenching collection of poetry about sexuality, race and identity, as tender as it is angry. My personal favorite poems: ‘Boy at Edge of Woods’; ‘Daedalus, After Icarus’; ‘Jasper, 1998’; ‘Apologia’; ‘History, According to Boy.’”

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid. “A fantastic story about blind ambition, with a fresh tone and tight, fast-paced prose. It mimics a self-help book — a playful guise for an unexpectedly tender story. I especially love that it’s written in the second person, so the story feels unique and universal all at once.”

Tampa by Alissa Nutting. “Grossly disturbing, but so compelling — I couldn’t turn away. It’s a fascinating foil to Lolita; a scathing indictment of our common assumption that women’s sexuality, especially when paired with beauty, can’t be truly predatory or, worse, that teenage boys are lucky to be preyed on. It’s great fodder for discussion.”

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan. “If you haven’t read a young adult novel recently, you should. There’s an explosion of great writing for teens, and Levithan’s book is a shining example that weaves together beautiful, brave stories of boys growing up gay in small town America. In a stroke of genius, it’s narrated by the collective voice of the men who died in the AIDS crisis.”

]]>http://blog.ted.com/70-book-picks-from-ted-speakers-and-attendees/feed/31Summer reading recommendations from TEDkatetedSummer reading recommendations from TEDDavid Eagleman and TEDAnne-Pasternak-thumbnailBill Gates and TEDAva-Duvernay-thumbnailDavid Rothkopf at TEDChristopher Soghoian at TEDJanet-Mock-thumbnailNadia-Goodman-thumbnailBooks to get you ready for TED2015http://blog.ted.com/books-to-get-you-ready-for-ted2015/
http://blog.ted.com/books-to-get-you-ready-for-ted2015/#commentsTue, 24 Feb 2015 21:43:46 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=95691[…]]]>Counting the days ’til TED2015? Yeah: we are, too. Before the conference begins on March 16, dive into a great book written by one of our speakers.

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, by Nick Bostrom. The philosopher parses the weighty issue of what it will mean when machines’ intelligence exceeds our own, and whether the force of this “superintelligence” will be beyond our control.

Books from speakers in Session 4, “Out of This World”

Exoplanet Atmospheres: Physical Processes, by Sara Seager. In this textbook, the astrophysicist lays out the common properties of all planetary atmospheres, focusing on “exoplanets” — that is, planets that don’t orbit our sun.

Lakes on Mars, edited by Nathalie Cabrol. In this volume, Cabrol and her co-editor, Edmond Grin, examine what we can learn about Mars’ history, present and possible future by studying its bodies of water.

How We’ll Live on Mars, by Stephen Petranek. You won’t be able to pick up this TED Book until after the conference (mark your calendar, it comes out in July), but in it, Petranek argues that our future residency on Mars is inevitable, and will come sooner than we might think.

Books from speakers in Session 5, “Life Stories”

The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas, by Anand Giridharadas. In this stirring work of nonfiction, journalist Giridharadas focuses on two lives that intertwine — a Bangladeshi immigrant to the United States who went on a quest to save his near-killer, an American, from death row.

Let IT Go, by Dame Stephanie Shirley with Richard Askwith. In this memoir, Shirley — an entrepreneur and philanthropist — tells her story, from arriving in England via Kindertransport to creating an incredibly successful software company staffed almost entirely with women.

The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, by Manuel Lima. The tree diagram — showing relations between branches of knowledge, forms of life, even languages development — dates back to the 12th century. In this book, a data visualization researcher examines its history.

Fire: Nature and Culture, by Stephen Pyne. A history of humans’ use of fire, charting how the ability to control fire has given us the power to reshape the world for our own benefit, and been the source of disasters that have leveled cities and defined cultures.

Full Circle: My Life And Journey, by Ellen MacArthur. In this memoir, published just as MacArthur retired from sailing, tells the story of her career — including what it was like to circumnavigate the world on her own, spending 71 days alone at sea.

On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, by Alice Goffman. Goffman, a sociologist, lived side-by-side with a group of young African-American men in a distressed community in Philadelphia for six years. In this book, she chronicles the forces that marginalize entire communities.

How to Be Black, by Baratunde Thurston. This memoir and satirical self-help book is an incisive commentary on American racism.

TED2015 will be held March 16 to 20 in Vancouver, Canada. Stay tuned to the TED Blog for live coverage and behind-the-scenes surprises. Want to watch along at home? TED Live brings the conference experience into your living room, office or classroom. Find out more »

The Terrorist’s Son: A great read for both adults and teenagers. Photo: Sacha Vega/TED

Zak Ebrahim’s The Terrorist’s Son has won an American Library Association award. The memoir — which became the first TED Book in print in September — was named a recipient of the Alex Award today. A coveted honor, the Alex Award is given to the 10 best adult books of the year that also appeal to young-adult readers.

The Terrorist’s Son tells Ebrahim’s unusual life story — his father was involved in planning the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and actively taught his son to hate. In the wake of his father’s conviction, Ebrahim was forced to constantly move and was often bullied, an experience that helped him choose his own path — one of tolerance and empathy.

To Ebrahim, it is especially meaningful that this award was given for appealing to young readers, as that was an audience he very much wanted to reach. “One of the greatest hopes I had in telling my story was to show young people that no matter what hardships you face there is light at the end of the tunnel,” he says. “We have the power to change our paths for the better — to learn from the hardships we face and come out of the darkness feeling confident and hopeful for the future.”

Since his book was published in September 2014, terrorism has continued to echo throughout the world. Ebrahim hopes his book gives people a different lens for viewing the headlines. “Another one of my main motivations for this book was to give people insight into what it is like for the families of those who commit terrible acts of violence in the name of their ideology,” he says. “Often these families are completely devastated — not only by the loss of a parent, child, brother or sister, but also from the ostracizing that often comes from the communities around them. I hope this book gives voice to those who cannot speak.”

And he also hopes that The Terrorist’s Son will continue to illuminate the way forward. “The only truly effective way of reducing extremism is not to kill those already radicalized but to prevent people from becoming radicalized in the first place,” he says.

The attendees of TEDxKoprivnicaLibrary in Croatia smile for the camera. Photo: Courtesy of TEDxKoprivnicaLibrary

When architect Joshua Prince-Ramus redesigned the Seattle Central Library, he and his team didn’t try to pinpoint the future of libraries or books. Instead, they rooted their blueprints in two foundational ideas: books are a form of technology, and the library is a social hub, as much as it is a house for media. Prince-Ramus didn’t know it then, but he had the right instinct. Eight years later, libraries around the world are adapting to a digital world by embracing their identity as a center for a community. One way they’re anchoring their new identity: by organizing TEDx events.

There are three public libraries in Juneau, Alaska: a haven in the middle of a shopping center, an outpost housed with the local fire department, and a main branch atop a parking garage overlooking the Gastineau Channel. Robert Barr, the director for all three, was interested in organizing a TEDx event because the platform intersected with the library’s mission to foster a civically-engaged community. “Libraries are well-suited for the work of civic engagement because we’re one of those spaces in the community that value objectivity and neutrality,” he says. Barr saw the Juneau Public Library as the perfect space for community members to openly discuss, debate and absorb challenging and complex issues in society, brought up in TED Talks.

Since then, the monthly events have continued in this format, covering a broad range of topics from communication to success, education to creativity.

“As technology becomes more and more prevalent in our daily lives, it’s easier and easier for us to only interact with people who think like us,” says Barr. “For our democracy and our way of life to function, we need to develop skills of compromise and consensus building by working with people — thinking with people, talking with people — that are a little out of our comfort zone.”

Petar Lukačić organizes TEDxKoprivnicaLibrary in Croatia, the only TEDx event in a library in Europe. He echoes Barr’s thoughts on the role of a library. “They are open to everyone and provide services that support formal and informal learning,” he says. Libraries are not just about lending books, they are “centers of communities” that foster life-long learning, he says. Before they knew about TEDx, Lukačić and his team had begun screening TED Talks along with other educational videos to a small group of library regulars. When they found out about the TEDx program, they applied for a license. From that point, they began to bring in local speakers in addition to screening talks from the TED Talks library.

All the TEDxKoprivnicaLibrary events have one shared theme, says Lukačić. “We guide ourselves with this motto: Great ideas in a small town.” At a recent gathering in May, one of the speakers painted a wall mural of a quote by Fran Galovic, the Croatian poet. At least 80 visitors attended, and it was the first time speakers came in from outside the local community.

Across the globe, in a library in a small town in Goderich, Canada, Christa Lehnen has been organizing TEDxGoderichLibrary since 2012. “Anyone is welcome to attend,” she says. The events are advertised in the library guide and, like Barr’s events in Juneau, these events focus on open discussion after the screening of a few TED Talks. Over the years, TEDxGoderichLibrary has covered themes like online collaboration, language and technology, happiness and education.

To Lehnan, libraries exist to provide informational and recreational content, and the formats those come in are evolving rapidly. “We have databases, video games, online videos/periodicals/magazines/and ebooks, which can be accessed outside the library anytime,” she says. TEDx events are a new format for content that lets people walk away with new ideas and perspectives, she says, and that helps them in their quest to be better informed.

Lukačić believes it’s precisely this “digital divide” that will bring the focus of public libraries back to being the center of the community. “We can talk about e-books and information available via Internet, but are all of these things available to everybody?” he asks. “You have to have an e-reader to read an e-book, you have to pay Internet access and have a computer, tablet, laptop or smartphone to access information online. What about the people who don’t have that?” The beauty of libraries, he says, is that—if they adapt—they can bridge those divides.

Lee Miller, director of the Butte-Silver Bow Public Library in Butte, Montana, has been doing just that: adapting. She’s been overseeing the construction of an art gallery in the library’s common space over the past year. This is where she held the first TEDxButtePublicLibrary in February, around a simulcast of the TED2014 conference. The new space stemmed, in part, from the growth of their TEDx community and the need for a larger venue for future TEDx events, as well as for other educational and arts programming.

TEDxButtePublicLibrary is an opportunity for people to watch talks together, but also a way for curious thinkers to connect with one another. Miller organized her first event with live speakers last summer, bringing together three local leaders — an arts advocate, an activist and a “hooch aficionado” — to share their experiences of working and living in Butte. This year, she invited a Butte history buff, a business professor and a sound artist. She and her team are now considering simulcast and speaker events for 2015.

Miller describes libraries as a “third space”—a social environment that is distinct from home and work. “Libraries have long been that place for civic dialogue and access to information,” she says.

For Barr in Juneau, it’s an exciting time to work in libraries. “Our mission and the work that we’re doing is broadening exponentially, and really fast,” he says. Around the country he says, libraries large and small are starting maker spaces, supporting business incubation, even allowing patrons to check out fishing poles, microscopes and telescopes. “It’s evolving selectively depending on what each community needs most from its library.” For Juneau, which he calls a “politically divided” community, Barr saw a big need for dialogue and discussion.

Barr talks about a new library that’s being built in Mendenhall Valley, one of the most populous areas of Alaska, which is slated to open to the public in September of next year. The structure will be 20,000 square feet — twice the size of its predecessor — and will include one large meeting space along with five smaller ones. One of these rooms, he says, will be the meeting spot for the next TEDxJuneauLibrary.

Rishi Manchanda has a message for doctors: that the real roots of illness are often “upstream” from the exam room, in patients’ home and work lives. Photo: Ryan Lash/TED

Before Jackie Hodges arrived for orientation at Tufts University School of Medicine, she got a gift from her soon-to-be med school: a free download of the e-book The Upstream Doctors by Rishi Manchanda.

In this book, Manchanda — who has worked for a decade as a doctor in community clinics around South Central Los Angeles — offers a bold idea for healthcare practitioners.

Check out the book, The Upstream Doctors.

He asks doctors and nurses not just to treat the symptoms of illness that bring a patient to their exam room, but to look upstream toward the factors in their home, workplace and community that might be the root cause: factors like stress, poor housing, polluted air, poverty.

This idea resonated for Hodges. “At the time, I was pretty anxious to start school,” she says. “I was nervous about how unfamiliar I was with all of the complicated, clinical aspects of the years of training ahead of me. Getting the book gave me a chance to step back and think about why I wanted to enter this field in the first place.”

For the past four years, Tufts has sent new medical students a “common book” before they arrive on campus, designed to get them thinking over the summer and talking during orientation week. Jennifer Greer-Morrissey, the medical school’s Community Service Learning Coordinator, chose this year’s book along with a group of deans and faculty members.

“I saw Rishi speak at a conference last fall and he mentioned the book,” she says. “I knew that he was a [Tufts] alum, and he was on my radar because of the work he had done with Rx Democracy. [His book] sounded perfect for our common book program.”

“It’s of interest to people who want to do family medicine, and to people who want to be trauma surgeons,” she says. “It speaks to people in different specialties. People gravitated toward it because it dovetails so nicely with our school’s focus.”

Tufts has a long tradition of training doctors to engage with the community, says Alan Solomont, Dean of Tufts’ Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, which works closely with the medical school. In the 1960s, faculty members set up two of the first community health centers in the United States—one in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, and another in Boston, Massachusetts, where the school is based. Beginning with the class of 2014, the medical school has launched a Community Service Learning program that requires all students to do 50 hours of service with a community-based organization, or to create a community service project that inspires them.

Rishi Manchanda socializes with students after speaking on Tufts campus, to a room filled with med students among others. Photo: Kelvin Ma/Tufts University

“We want to incorporate into the education of our future doctors an appreciation for their responsibilities to the community, to the nation, to the world,” says Solomont. “What Rishi talks about is the unfortunate reality that our healthcare system is not doing as good a job at treating both the needs of individual patients and the larger healthcare needs of communities.”

And that’s why The Upstream Doctors felt like a good choice: “The whole purpose of this program is to get students upstream — to get them into communities in a way that helps them understand more about social determinants of health,” says Greer-Morrissey. “There’s so much more to medicine than what students can learn in the lecture hall and lab.”

“Since the book came out,” says Manchanda, “I’ve learned that it has become ‘required reading’ in some university courses. I’m humbled and pleased to know that the idea is resonating,” he says. “But Tufts is my alma mater — it played such a formative role in my career — so the news was especially meaningful.”

During orientation, new Tufts med students split into groups of 10 to talk about the ideas in The Upstream Doctors. Second-year student Emi Serrell led one of these discussion groups. “It made me feel excited about medical school,” she says. “The first two years of medical school are mostly about the chemical and biological aspects of medicine — we learn the human body inside and out. The Upstream Doctors made me appreciate that, in order to be successful in medicine, doctors have to understand patients as human — and not just biological beings.”

In October, Manchanda visited Tufts campus to speak, and, says Greer-Morrissey, the auditorium was packed with med students — as well as dental students, nutrition students and physician assistant students. After the lecture, says Manchanda, “Most of the questions that came my way from students were along the lines of, ‘I’m an upstreamist at heart. Do you have career advice to help me do this kind of work?’ “

“They reacted most to the stories,” he said. “Stories of frustration, of patients whose illnesses are direct results of unhealthy social and environmental conditions, and of weary providers, who feel like they have the tools or support they need. But they also engaged with stories of hope—of providers who made a difference when they redesigned their clinic systems.”

Manchanda lectures to students about his idea at Tufts University. Photo: Kelvin Ma/Tufts University

Interested in reading more about the intersection of healthcare and community? Here, the Tufts University School of Medicine common books from the past three years:

]]>http://blog.ted.com/a-class-of-medical-students-thinks-upstream/feed/2141006_14787_manchanda 087.jpgkatetedRishi Manchanda gives a talk in the TED office, about how doctors can think upstream to the real roots of illness. Photo: Ryan Lash/TEDCheck out The Upstream Doctors.Rishi Manchanda socializes with students after speaking on Tufts campus. Photo: Kelvin Ma/Tufts UniversityRishi Manchanda gives a lecture to medical students at more at Tufts University. Photo: Kelvin Ma/Tufts UniversityAmanda Palmer on expanding her TED Talk into a book and getting a lesson in vulnerability from Brené Brownhttp://blog.ted.com/amanda-palmer-on-expanding-her-ted-talk-into-a-book/
http://blog.ted.com/amanda-palmer-on-expanding-her-ted-talk-into-a-book/#commentsWed, 19 Nov 2014 23:00:17 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=94125[…]]]>

Amanda Palmer’s new book grew out of a simple fact: that she couldn’t cram every relevant story into her 14-minute TED Talk. So she has expanded her talk, “The art of asking,” which focuses on how artists can (and should) ask those who love their work for help, into the book The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help, about the need to ask for help more generally. And in another interesting twist for TED fans, the foreword to the book was written by one Brené Brown, who gave the fourth most-watched talk of all time, “The power of vulnerability.”

We asked Palmer a few questions about the process of turning her talk into a book and about the experience of working with Brown. Below, an edited transcript.

Would you rather have give your TED Talk 10 times in a row to an audience of clowns, or have to write one more chapter of your book with a deadline of tomorrow morning?

Oh my god. Great. Well, I love clowns. So as long as I didn’t have to actually memorize that sucker word for word and could just kind of summarize it. Or maybe I could mime the TED talk for the clowns? Maybe this could become a multi-media interactive performance in which the clowns responded to my TED mime-talk? Maybe all the clowns could be wearing Google Glass and we could webcast this?

Wait, forget it. I’ll just write another chapter of the book. Easier.

What was the biggest challenge of bringing your idea from a talk to the written page?

Funny enough, it was a challenge to try to capture the beautiful economy of the talk in 300 pages. That 14-minute time limit was the greatest gift: I’m very glad my talk wasn’t longer, because I don’t think it would have been quite so effective, emotionally, and I don’t think it would have gone viral.

When I was working on the talk with Jamy Ian Swiss, a friend who became my default coach, he kept saying, “Cut that part, Amanda, you can put it in the book. Cut this too — save it for the book.” At the time, there was no book. We just had the assumption that maybe someday, there’d be an outlet for these other stories. The pieces I cut would probably be surprising to some. They might seem off-topic. But to me, these are essential riffs on the same theme as my talk: my job as a stripper, my marriage difficulties around the topic of money and help, my experiences with abortion and having to deal with certain kinds of pain in isolation, my best friend’s cancer battle leading to a cancelled tour. All of these things had a lot to do with “the art of asking,” but they weren’t going to fit neatly into a 14-minute talk.

So I cut a lot of stories from the TED talk, and they’d been lying there fallow on the cutting room floor, waiting to be threaded in. The book happened much faster than I thought, but I’m also glad it happened fast, before all those tethered balls in the air had a chance to land and disconnect. And when I got my book advance, I hired Jamy for an actual salary this time to be my book doula. It all worked out pretty beautifully.

What types of help did you find are the hardest for you to ask for? How do you push through that?

I’ve found that everybody has an Achilles’ heel when it comes to asking. I know a lot of people who can boldly ask for a raise, but they can’t ask for a hug. And I know a lot of people with the opposite problem. My personal kryptonite, and I detail it painfully in the book, is taking financial help from my husband. I’m happy taking millions of dollars from strangers, but it’s taken me a long time to get used to taking help from him. My life finally hit a point where I saw the bigger picture — it took my friend getting fatally ill, but this is all part of the journey. I noticed that I ask too much of myself. Letting myself off the hook is one of my biggest projects.

Speaking of your husband, he is quite a well-known writer. Did you let him edit your manuscript or were you hesitant to ask for help on that?

I wasn’t at all hesitant: I utilized the hell out of Neil Gaiman with this book. But the first ask wasn’t about editing or shaping or writing: it was about letting go of his wife for two months so I could write in solitude. That was difficult to do. And the minute I finished my first, hulking 150,000 word manuscript, I handed it over to him, squeezed my eyes shut and said, “Cut out 50,000 words.” And he sat down for two days, and cut away the fat. That was a massive act of trust. I trusted his writer’s eye so greatly that I didn’t even read his cut manuscript. We started with Neil’s edit as a fresh draft. And in the final days of last-minute editing, Neil suggested a fantastic order-switch with the pieces of the book that wound up unlocking a problem. The guy can write, but he’s also a fantastic editor. I owe him one.

And Brené Brown also helped by writing the foreword of the book. How did you two meet?

I found Brené’s talk when I was on a TED-watching marathon while writing my own talk back in 2013. For about the week before cracking down to write my first draft, I immersed myself on TED.com and watched about 50 talks — focusing on the most-viewed — to see how people were getting their ideas across most effectively. I found a few heroes during that week, some of whom have come into my life since as real heroes, like Amy Cuddy and Jill Bolte Taylor, both of whom I got to meet and hug in the flesh at TED itself and both of whom I now treasure as friends. But Brené’s talk especially moved me. A few weeks before leaving for Australia, where I wrote the book, I was in the Trident Bookstore in Boston, and saw Daring Greatly lying on the staff picks table. I picked it up and started reading it. I was floored: she’d basically written the same book that I had in mind. Hers was academic and anecdotal and mine was pure memoir, but still the threads were exactly the same. She even used a Velveteen Rabbit story, which I couldn’t believe — I’d been planning on quoting the exact same passage. So I sent Brené a DM on Twitter, asking her to write the intro. I was so honored when she said yes, and I think what she wrote is absolutely perfect.

What did she write in her foreword that most surprised you?

I loved, most of all, that Brené was reaching out to the rest of the world in a way that I couldn’t. She works at a university, lives a domestic life, goes to church; but she sees her life reflected directly in my weird rock-and-roll couchsurfing existence. This is what made Brené’s book so great, in itself: our situations are different, but our emotional experiences give us all a common ground. We all feel shame, vulnerability, fear. I’m so incredibly proud to be a small voice in what feels like a zeitgeist of women writers lately, including Amy Cuddy — who’s about to bust out with her own book — and Laurie Penny and Caitlin Moran, who are embracing these commonalities we humans have and casting our own stories into the net of understanding. I think it’s a beautiful time to be alive: it’s like we’re all doing our little bit to shine our teeny personal flashlights into the wide, big, dark. With enough of us, the dark is receding and things are taking shape. I can’t wait to see what we find there.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/amanda-palmer-on-expanding-her-ted-talk-into-a-book/feed/48514586004_4847a73db0_hkatetedAmandaPalmer-ctaArt of Asking book coverBreneBrown-ctaThe evolution of a TED Book coverhttp://blog.ted.com/the-evolution-of-a-ted-book-cover/
http://blog.ted.com/the-evolution-of-a-ted-book-cover/#commentsWed, 12 Nov 2014 19:30:19 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=93650[…]]]>In his talk, “Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is,” Chip Kidd (a TED Books designer in his own right) gives a wonderfully concise description of what book cover designers do. He says, “My job is to ask this question: ‘What do stories look like?’”

For David Shoemaker, the designer who made the cover for the new TED Book The Art of Stillness, this question presented a challenge. Because the story in this book, written by longtime travel writer Pico Iyer, is about the joy that comes from sitting still, quietly, and reflecting on life.

“I tried a lot of ideas at the start—straightforward ones, like a statue, a still-life photo, a canoe on a lake. There were also some deliberately counterintuitive ones—like an antic scribbled circle with vibrating type,” says Shoemaker. “Some were just type-based, since it’s a strong title.”

In all, Shoemaker created about 40 draft designs for this cover, and did about 25 revisions once he found the right approach. Below, a few of these revisions, with Shoemaker’s insights on how he got to the final cover.

Revision 3. From his initial batch of designs, here’s the one that seemed to work best. This cover uses four of the illustrations from inside the book, serene landscapes from photographer Eydis Einarsdottir. “Everyone liked the idea of a single, almost abstract landscape scene, but it risked looking like a new age book. Trial and error proved that using a single image inevitably sent the wrong message,” Shoemaker says. “I had the idea of collaging six of the landscapes to convey the premise by comparison. One image may look meditative, but with six of them, you absorb what they have in common.”

Revision 4. When the approach above didn’t quite work, Shoemaker went back to the idea of a single image. “This was the most successful of the single landscapes. We returned to this because it has a certain abstract power — it takes a moment to register what you’re seeing, and the horizon line plays off the logo band in an interesting way. It certainly conveys stillness,” he says. “But I think the question of the self-help-book look still applied, so we didn’t go forward with it.”

Revision 11.After a few more revisions, Shoemaker reverted back to the image grid. “The type was an effort to make the book look more literary. In the end, the grid design felt closest to what we wanted to convey, but it lacked the power of a single image,” he says. “Even if that single image was impossible to find.”

The final version. “It was someone at TED who suggested that we try to ghost the image behind the type. I loved the idea,” says Shoemaker. “It was a struggle to get enough of the image to show through, since the title doesn’t exactly form a neat wall of type, but I think it does the job that the others didn’t. It’s strong, visibly memorable and readable from a distance — and in the Amazon age, it’s important to be readable from a thumbnail. It does what we sought to do with the others: to use a landscape to convey stillness, but to frame it in an unexpected way.” This is the cover you’ll see on bookstore shelves.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/the-evolution-of-a-ted-book-cover/feed/15TEDBooks_DL_PicoIyer_6025_16x9katetedTEDBooks_DL_PicoIyer_6025_16x9art of stillness.REV3Art-of-Stillness.REV4art-of-stillness.REV11art-of-stillness.FINAL-redoThe Art of Stillness in an age of distractionhttp://blog.ted.com/the-art-of-stillness-in-an-age-of-distraction/
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The “T” in TED stands for technology. So it might sound counterintuitive that we would release a book about the need to unplug.

But we live in a madly accelerating world, where new technologies — for all their benefits — are making our lives more crowded, more chaotic and noisier than ever. There’s never been a greater need to slow down, tune out and give ourselves permission to be still. Thus, our new TED Book: The Art of Stillness by Pico Iyer.

A veteran travel writer who has journeyed from Easter Island to Ethiopia, Cuba to Kathmandu, Iyer may also seem a counterintuitive choice to pen this book on the importance of staying still. After all, his first TED talk explained why he thinks of India, Japan, the UK and the US as different facets of his “home.” But Iyer is an unexpected sage on the topic, and in The Art of Stillness he suggests that the greatest adventure may be found in going nowhere.

In the book, Iyer shines a light on a fascinating phenomenon: how advances in technology are making us more likely to seek out spaces to retreat. [See “Why we need a secular sabbath” on Ideas.TED.com.] And further, that the very people responsible for creating new technology are at the forefront of this new return to stillness.

Selected as a “Notable Book of the Month” by iBooks, The Art of Stillness is already garnering praise: “This book isn’t a meditation guide or a New-Age tract but rather a celebration of the age-old practice of sitting with no goal in mind and no destination in sight,” writes Kirkus Reviews. “Rather than reading it quickly and filing it, readers will likely slow down to meet its pace and might continue carrying it around as a reminder.”

]]>http://blog.ted.com/the-art-of-stillness-in-an-age-of-distraction/feed/16TEDBooks_DL_PicoIyer_6095_4x3tedstaffTEDBooks_DL_PicoIyer_6095_4x3Want to learn how to give a great talk? Chris Anderson is writing the official TED guide to public speakinghttp://blog.ted.com/chris-anderson-is-writing-the-the-official-ted-guide-to-public-speaking/
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In the upcoming book “Talk This Way! The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking,” our curator Chris Anderson will give insights on what makes a talk great. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Over and over, you keep asking us: What’s the best way to give a TED Talk? It’s not just that you’re interested in sharing your ideas at a TED or local TEDx event. Short presentations have become a bread-and-butter staple at schools and offices around the world, and you want more guidance on how to give them well.

And so, our curator Chris Anderson is writing a book to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in spring 2016. Titled Talk This Way! The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking, it will be packed with insights on what makes talks work.

“There was no one spark for writing this book—it’s more like a long-smoldering fire that’s now ready to break out,” he told the TED Blog. “A decade ago, speaker prep at TED was simple: We’d agree on a basic talk idea, send the speaker a plaque of ‘the TED Commandments’ and wait to see what they showed up with. In recent years we’ve been stepping up our pre-conference engagement with speakers, encouraging them to carry out early rehearsals, working with some of them on their scripts. We’ve found the process to be incredibly valuable. We’ve seen speakers who start out nervous and/or with unfocused ideas come through to give truly compelling talks.”

One of the main points: there simply is no one-size-fits-all approach.

“We should be clear on one thing. There is no single formula to giving a TED Talk. Indeed, the most annoying talks of all are those that seem to think there is,” he says. “But at the same time, there’s a ton of important advice to offer, including a key metaphor that many speakers find helpful. I’ll offer all the guidance I can, but much of it is in helping speakers to find the type of talk that’s right for them. And by the way, the book isn’t just for TED Talks. It’s meant to be helpful for any form of public speaking or presentation.”

Another key goal for the book: highlighting the amazing power of direct human-to-human communication, recorded on video, in the Internet age.

While we hope that this book will be helpful to you, we also see it as another way to foster TED’s mission of sharing ideas for free to the world. All proceeds from the book — from the advance to sales — will be donated to TED’s nonprofit parent company, and will support the free sharing of TED Talks and other free programs around the world.

The book will be available internationally. So far, rights have been negotiated in Canada, Brazil, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan and the UK, and deals are in progress in France, Poland and Portugal.

Have specific questions about giving a talk that you’d like answered in the book? Email blog@ted.com and we’ll pass them on to Chris. Who is busily typing away on this book as we speak.

“It’s fun!” he tells us. “I mean, not all the time — I can definitely get hit with intense writer’s block. But when it flows, it’s really exciting. There’s so much great material to tap into. Examples from hundreds of different TED Talks, and the direct advice from about 30 favorite speakers who have been generous enough to share their wisdom. If all I do is channel them, all will be well.”

]]>http://blog.ted.com/chris-anderson-is-writing-the-the-official-ted-guide-to-public-speaking/feed/6Chris Anderson at TEDGlobaltedstaffIn the book, "Talk This Way! The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking," our curator Chris Anderson will gives insights on what makes a talk great. Photo: James Duncan DavidsonBooks to get you ready for TEDGlobal 2014http://blog.ted.com/books-to-get-you-ready-for-tedglobal-2014/
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Can’t wait for TEDGlobal 2014? We’re here to help! Spend the next two weeks curling up with these books by the wonderful speakers who will grace the stage in Rio.

No Place to Hide, by Glenn Greenwald. In his new book, journalist Glenn Greenwald takes a detailed look at government snooping and tells the story of working with Edward Snowden to leak classified NSA documents.

Zak Ebrahim’s “The Terrorist’s Son” is the first TED Book in printed form. Photo: Dian Lofton

On the anniversary of September 11, we’re proud to launch an idea that is the deepest possible antidote to terror. It’s the powerful story of Zak Ebrahim, who grew up the son of a terrorist (his father helped plan the 1993 WTC bombing), and chose tolerance over hatred.

This idea reaches you in a form that’s new for us: It’s the first in a series of book-talk pairings that allow us to go deeper on our mission. The 9-minute talk astounded the audience at TED2014, bringing them to their feet. The book picks up where Zak’s talk left off, delving deeper into his astonishing first-person account of a family engulfed by events much larger than them.

We think you’ll find The Terrorist’s Son: A Story of Choice a truly riveting read: The remarkable true story of a boy trained to hate, and the man who chose another path.

We’re publishing The Terrorist’s Son with our partner, Simon & Schuster. It’s the first in a series of 12 books we’ll release over the next 12 months in hardcover, e-book and audiobook. These books cover a wide, TED-like range of subjects — from architecture to business, space travel to love. Each is intentionally short, up to 20,000 words: Long enough to dive deep into an idea, but short enough to be read in a single sitting. Many will include wondrous photography and art. All will bring new ideas and sharp writing to you monthly.

The books will have their own signature look, with cover art designed by legendary book jacket artist (and TED speaker) Chip Kidd. Among the forthcoming titles from TED Books: Acclaimed travel writer Pico Iyer’s The Art of Stillness will pose a counterintuitive truth: the more technology connects us, the more we feel desperate to unplug; Architizer founder Marc Kushner takes us on a global tour of groundbreaking advances in architecture in The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings; and in the Mathematics of Love, Hannah Fry offers us patterns, proofs and the search for the ultimate equation.

We’re excited to see how these books help speakers go beyond their 18 minutes, and how they’ll help you dive deeper into their important ideas.

What happens when a teacher mixes Madame Bovary and a TED Talk? Good things, actually. Photo: iStockphoto

My high school English class had just finished reading Madame Bovary, and we were all confused. (For those of you who have not read it, please skip to paragraph two. Spoiler alert!) Emma Bovary, a listless housewife in search of the passionate love she’s read about in books, has many sordid affairs, falls deeply into debt and kills herself by swallowing arsenic, and her ever-faithful and terribly dull husband Charles dies a while later of a broken heart, and their daughter, upon finding her father dead, is sent to work in a cotton mill. We were all baffled and upset by the end of this intense, complicated novel. When we arrived in class the next day, our teacher asked us the question: “What can we learn about real love from Madame Bovary?” and no one knew what to say.

That night for homework, our only assignment was to watch a TED Talk: “Why we love, why we cheat” by anthropologist Helen Fisher. In the talk, Fisher explained her work: “My colleagues and I took 32 people who were madly in love and put them into a functional MRI brain scanner.” I knew that Helen Fisher was taking a very different approach to understanding love from Gustave Flaubert. So why was I reading Flaubert and watching her talk, one after the other?

I didn’t realize what my teacher was doing until class discussion the next day. We shuffled in, pulled our desks into a circle, took our copies of Madame Bovary out of our bags and looked around at each other.

“So,” my teacher said, “if Gustave Flaubert and Helen Fisher were having a conversation about love, what would they say to one another? What would you say to them?”

There was a pause, and then: “I mean, the thing about love being a drug, like cocaine, seems like Emma felt love like that?”

“But then what about Charles? Was he in love?”

“Well he wasn’t intense, and he wasn’t possessive. Maybe he wasn’t in love?”

“He died for love.”

“Did he die for love or for heartbreak?”

“What’s the difference?”

The discussion continued, back and forth.

What my English teacher did that day showed me the value of TED Talks in the classroom: school is all about ideas, and TED can help teachers bring ideas into conversation and debate. TED Talks aren’t like Wikipedia articles—yes, they contain information, but at their best, they actually spark a conversation. They can be used to bring diverse voices, questions, and even conflict into classroom discussions—as Helen Fisher’s did for my English class. Physics classes can start to think about just how non-linear physics really is with Boaz Almog’s demonstration of quantum superconductors, history classes can think about Yoruba Richen’s talk and wonder about how rights movements work, students can even question the school system they are a part of with Ken Robinson’s talk on how schools creativity.

I graduated from high school in May. (I’ve spent the summer before college interning with the lovely editorial department at TED.) Throughout my high school career, I’ve seen teachers use TED Talks often—sometimes very well, and sometimes in ways I didn’t find as effective. I recently got in touch with a former teacher from my school, Suzanne Fogarty (now the director of the Lincoln School in Providence, Rhode Island), who showed Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk, “The danger of a single story,” in an assembly. Afterward, Adichie’s talk popped up in lectures, lunchtime discussions, even in the hallways between classes. Her ideas had entered the vocabulary of the school. Everyone was thinking about the “single story.”

I wanted to find out why Ms. Fogarty chose to use TED in her curriculum. When I asked, she responded, “TED Talks make us pause and listen to the percolation of ideas—art, engineering, technology, the humanities, spoken word and more.”

Her comment clarified something for me. The best use of TED Talks in the classroom really do take advantage of that “percolation of ideas.” Talks work best when teachers use them to give perspective and to generate discussion around difficult topics.

But how exactly do you do this? Stephanie Lo, Director of TED-Ed Programs, advises teachers to use TED videos as a way to get students thinking. She recommends that teachers check out Ed.TED.com, which is packed full of short, animated lessons created specifically for students. (When searching, teachers can filter by student age—there are talks for elementary school students, middle school students, high school students and college students.) And she recommends that, whether they’re using a lesson or a talk, teachers prepare discussion questions to get students thinking before they get to class.

Fogarty echoes the sentiment. “I like having some essential questions to accompany the talk,” she told me, “or asking students to research TED Talks that carry meaning for their generation.”

These conversations helped me see what can really happen when TED Talks are brought into the classroom. Students can better grasp topics they might not fully understand at first glance, think critically about how they think about the world, and discuss other big ideas alongside their own. Gustave Flaubert can have a conversation with Helen Fisher about the meaning of love. And that is pretty cool.

Last night, four authors stepped onto an Edison-bulb-lit stage in our New York office to share the bold ideas at the center of their books. “Tonight will bring to life the nonfiction section of the library,” promised the evening’s host, June Cohen, Executive Producer of TED Media. From a new vision for healthcare, to a peek inside the minds of mentally ill animals, to clarion call from a travel writer for us all to spend more time going nowhere, the night bounced through the Dewey Decimal System, offering inspiring new perspectives along the way.

The event began with a thought-provoking talk from a special guest (we can’t ruin the surprise, but look for this talk on TED.com on Tuesday, August 12). After that, physicianRishi Manchanda—author of the TED Book The Upstream Doctors—stepped up to share an idea for how make healthcare far more effective. For a decade, Manchanda has worked as a doctor in South Central Los Angeles, treating patients who live and work in harsh conditions, and he has come to realize that his job isn’t just about treating a patient’s symptoms but about getting to the root cause of what is making them ill—the factors upstream from the immediate problem. “Health begins not in the four walls of the doctor’s office, but where we live, work, eat, sleep and play,” says Manchanda, explaining that living and working conditions account for 60% of premature death. In a stirring talk, he called for doctors to look more upstream and to talk to patients about the realities of their lives, and for patients to be more proactive in asking medical professionals if factors at home or work might be affecting how they feel.

Can parrots get depressed? Yes, says TED Fellow Laurel Braitman, the author of the book Animal Madness. Photo: Ryan Lash

Next, singer/songwriter Tift Merritt showed off her unique Americana sound, playing two songs off her album Traveling Alone. And then it was time for science historian Laurel Braitman, a TED Fellow, to share the idea at the core of her recently released book Animal Madness. Braitman is intrigued by how mental illness manifests in animals, a fascination that began with her dog, Oliver, who has both obsessive-compulsive disorder and acute anxiety. “If animals can suffer from [mental illness] too, what does that mean for us?” she wonders. In a way, mental illness in animals can be viewed as a surplus or deficit of something healthy. Fear and anxiety, says Braitman, are helpful animal emotions when they are reactions to threats; even OCD is an exaggeration of a positive animal behavior, the desire to groom and stay clean. As she tells tales of cats with PTSD and a one-armed monkey who found solace in a friendship with a bunny, Braitman explains why she thinks that, by virtue of having emotions ourselves, we can, if not perfectly understand, at least empathize with what animals are feeling. “Even though you can’t know exactly what’s going on in mind of your pig, your pug or your partner, that shouldn’t bar you from having empathy,” she says.

Finally, Pico Iyertook the stage. This longtime travel writer has spent his life crisscrossing the globe — but he’s developed his ability to appreciate travel by going nowhere, taking time to sit quietly with himself and reflect. Iyer recalls a trip to North Korea more than two decades ago. “The trip lasted for a few days,” he says. “Sitting still with it allowed me to turn that into insights that lasted for 24 years.” In this lyrical talk, Iyer calls for each of us to find time to sit with ourselves — to find space away from work, friends, family — because, he says, only by stepping back from the busy screens of our lives can we start to see the big picture. “Sitting still is where we get what we most need in our accelerated lives,” he says.

“The Nonfiction Issue” was part of TED@250, a series of salons held in our New York headquarters at 250 Hudson Street. Since our main conferences are only twice a year, TED@250 gives the opportunity for talks that rethink current headlines, or that offer the kind of personal stories that work better on the small scale. Stay tuned. Some of these talks will be coming to TED.com soon.

Hannah Brencher carried a USPS mail crate with her when she spoke at TED@NYC. Photo: Ryan Lash

Hannah Brencher strolled onstage to give her TED Talk, “Love letters to strangers,” with a US Postal Service mail crate propped on her hip. And that mail crate full of letters turned out to be a metaphor for what happened next — a box of surprises and possibilities.

Onstage at Joe’s Pub in June 2012, Brencher told her story of writing love letters to strangers — yes, in her own handwriting — and leaving them on café tables, tucking them in books at the library, and sending them to anyone on the internet who asked. The project, which she began as a way to fight her post-college depression, took on its own life, so Brencher set up the website More Love Letters to help the letter-writing project expand to anyone who wants to get or send a little love.

As she wrote and practiced her TED Talk in the weeks before the June event, she was also daydreaming about leaving her full-time job to focus on More Love Letters — and to try her hand at writing her story as a memoir.

“The week I gave my talk,” says Brencher, “I was offered a freelance position that allowed me to leave my full-time job. So I gave my TED Talk, and then I walked into my office Monday morning and quit. It was a transformational weekend.”

But not an instant transformation, she says: “I left to work on More Love Letters and to write a book. But I started to gather more and more freelance work and just got very good at doing other things. I didn’t know how to do a book proposal; I didn’t know how to find an agent. I was just stalling.”

Then one day, five months after she quit her job, her phone started blowing up. “Friends started texting me saying, ‘Hannah, you’re the TED Talk of the Day right now,’” she remembers. “My life just flipped upside down from that point forward. Within 24 hours, my life was completely different.”

In the five months since her talk, Brencher hadn’t gotten far at all on her book idea. But a few hours after her talk posted, she got the push she needed: an email from an agent. “She sent me a message that said, ‘Hey, this resonates so much with me,’” remembers Brencher. “‘What you’re doing—I see this being a book.'”

Brencher signed with this agent, and the two began the long process of writing a book proposal. In the end, Brencher signed a contract with Howard Books at Simon & Schuster, and her memoir—If You Find This Letter—will be out in March 2015. “It tells her story of living in New York City, dealing with depression, and the movement that came out of these letters,” she says. “I had no idea how much [writing a book] was going to take out of me—how much I had to become a creature of habit, how much I had to sit with myself on a daily basis, and how much of the story I didn’t actually have figured out until I went to the page. There were a lot of days of me lying on the floor, crying into the Ikea carpet. But I am so thankful. It’s been just unreal to me.”

But as exciting as it was to get an agent and start writing her book, Brencher says that she knew the talk had truly made ripples when More Love Letters was asked to partner with the US Postal Service, after someone at the post office’s PR agency saw her TED Talk. The agency asked Brencher and More Love Letters to help promote the post office’s traditional Love stamp released each February for Valentine’s Day. The 2013 stamp was called “Sealed with Love.”

For the 14 days before Valentine’s Day in 2013, More Love Letters held love-letter-writing parties around the country and rallied their audience to write love letters to men and women serving in the U.S. military for the holiday.

Brencher snapped this photo of the letter-writing table she manned to promote the stamp, “Sealed with Love.”

On February 14, Brencher headed to Times Square in New York City, where the Postal Service had pitched an enormous “Sealed with Love” tent. She wore a red dress and sat a table writing love letters and offering stationery to passersby to write their own. In the tent, post office employees passed out stamps. Meanwhile, pop star Kevin Jonas and his wife—her fellow representatives for the stamp—roamed the tent, meeting and greeting.

“It was a dream partnership,” said Brencher. “We would not be able to function without the United States Postal Service, so to be able to meet some of the workers was great. People make comments like, ‘Oh, the Postal Service is on the way out,’ but it is so essential. I loved handing out envelopes and stamps and playing a part in making someone who would probably not write a letter reach out to a loved one.”

Of course, much more has happened since Brencher’s TED Talk posted. Brencher’s created a love-letter stationery kit through Potter Style at Crown Publishing; it will appear in gift stores in December of this year. Brencher continues to receive dozens of emails a week about her talk, and found herself especially moved when a class of 5th graders in Long Island watched it and wrote her a big stack of letters in response.

Meanwhile, More Love Letters is now up to 15 volunteers. Brencher hopes that with increased visibility through her talk, her book, and releasing more products like the stationery kit, More Love Letters will continue to grow.

“Letters—whether they’re breakup letters, or letters for people who are starting their first year of college, or just a random hello—we want to find a way to get them to as many people as possible,” she says. “Something that shows up in the mailbox for you—there’s a power behind that that you can’t touch.”

Hannah Brencher, head down, writing Valentine’s Day love letters in Times Square.

Summer: the season for cracking open a good book under the shade of a tree. Below, we’ve compiled about 70 stellar book recommendations from members of the TED community. Warning: not all of these books can be classified as beach reads. And we think that is a good thing.

Picks from Elizabeth Gilbert, author

The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman. “The only book I have ever bought by the crate-load. I give copies of this sumptuous masterpiece to everyone I care about. I could try to describe it further, but … it would be more efficient if you just read it yourself. (Watch Maira Kalman’s TED Talk, “The illustrated woman.”)

What Are You Optimistic About? by John Brockman. “In a world of grim news, this book is a beacon of light. Brockman asked more than 150 big thinkers to each write a short essay on what they authentically feel good about in the world, looking into the future. It is not always easy to find optimism that is also intelligent, but this book has it. It will make you feel better, trust me.”

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. “ I find something incredibly soothing about the notion of a 2nd-century Roman emperor worrying about the same stuff I worry about—namely, how are we to be? What makes a good person? What is honor? How do we endure disappointment? How do we find peace within chaos? He does not necessarily always have he answers, but the stubbornness of these eternal inquiries always calms me down.”

Mixing Minds: The Power of Relationship in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism by Pilar Jennings. “Jennings is both a psychotherapist and a Buddhist practitioner. As someone with one foot in both camps, she writes intelligently about the merits and pitfalls of both Western psychiatry and Eastern philosophy—unthreading both paths with remarkable intelligence and perspective. Good stuff for seekers of all stripes.”

Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert. “Jack Gilbert (no relation to me, sadly) was a beautiful man and a mighty poet who could have been one of the great literary rock stars of our age—except that he didn’t care a bit about fame, fortune, or reputation. This collection is his grand, twilight-of-life rumination on passion, beauty and mortality. It includes a line that I strive daily to live by: ‘We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.’ ”

Want Not by Jonathan Miles. “TED alumni Dave Eggers thought this was one of the best novels of 2013, and I agree completely. Miles has written a staggeringly powerful story about the relationship between contemporary Americans and their post-consumer garbage. There is not a preachy word in here, but it’s a life-changing narrative, nonetheless.

The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald. “The late Sebald’s writing was some kind of gorgeous combination of elegy, poetry, contemplation, fiction, diary. Nobody in the world ever wrote, or thought, or even felt quite like him. Every word is important, compassionate and resonant—like notes played on a distant cello. We lost this author too soon; he was one of the great ones.”

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. “This unusual book is a series of fictional conversations between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo. Each page brings a new description of an imagined city within the Great Khan’s empire—as described by Marco Polo. It is a magical, delightful, outrageously inventive. Just fall into these pages and let your imagination do the rest.”

However Long the Night: Molly Melching’s Journey to Help Millions of African Women and Girls Triumphby Aimee Molloy. “For more than 40 years, Molly Melching has worked in Senegalese communities to help improve lives. Her success is based on her insistence on working in close partnership with local communities … This book reinforced my own belief that developing communities already have the potential and desire to spark the change that will lead to better lives for themselves and their families.”

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovationby Tim Brown. “Design thinking is a model of problem solving that could have huge implications for global health and development. It’s an approach that recognizes that the people facing challenges have the best understanding of what solutions will work for them. So many of the women and families I meet have the potential to lift themselves out of poverty. Design thinking reminds us that to unlock this opportunity, we have to first enlist their help.” (Watch Tim Brown’s TED Talk, “Tales of creativity and play.”)

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker. “Steven Pinker’s carefully researched study stands out as one of the most important books I’ve ever read. Pinker paints a remarkable picture showing that the world has evolved over time to be a far less violent place than before. It offers a fresh perspective on how to achieve positive outcomes in the world.” (Watch Steven Pinker’s TED Talk on this topic, “The surprising decline in violence.”)

Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding—and How We Can Improve the World Even More by Charles Kenny. “I know from personal experience that stepping into the public square to announce that foreign aid is important and effective can be lonely work. Charles Kenny’s elegant book on the impact of aid carefully documents how the quality of life—even in the world’s poorest countries—has improved dramatically over the past several decades with reams of solid data to support his case.”

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo. “Katherine Boo spent three years getting to know the people of Annawadi, a slum of about 3,000 people on the edge of a sewage-filled lake in India’s largest city. Her book is a poignant reminder of how much more work needs to be done to address the inequities in the world. But it’s also an uplifting story of people striving to make a life for themselves.”

The Man Who Fed the World by Leon Hesser. “Norman Borlaug is one of my heroes, and Leon Hesser’s biography is a fascinating account of Borlaug’s life and accomplishments. This is a story of genius, self-sacrifice, and determination. Borlaug was a remarkable scientist and humanitarian whose work in agriculture is rightfully credited with saving the lives of over a billion people.”

Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate by Vaclav Smil. “Vaclav Smil is probably my favorite living author. If you care about energy issues, I recommend this volume, though its unvarnished look at the realities of energy use and infrastructure may be disconcerting to anyone who thinks solving our energy problems will be easy. Smil provides important lessons to keep in mind if we’re to avert the looming climate crisis.”

Picks from Rashida Jones, actor and writer

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. “Just…laugh out loud funny. If you ever think comedy is only best as a visual medium, read his chapter on nouvelle cuisine.”

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. “My favorite modern novel. The detail and imagination in which Franzen writes about so many different characters’ psyches is mind-blowing.”

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. “There are no words for this book. Expect perfect and true. I’ve loved it my whole life. I cry when I think about it now.”

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. “If ever I feel like too many characters or too much plot is impossible to make work, I look at this beautiful, epic novel.”

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. “This book is always good. Especially when you need to get big-picture on a project. Big, universal themes that are undeniable and infinite and astutely observed.”

Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. “Sometimes, I need to connect to something bigger than me. To remember that anything good that comes to me is really from somewhere else that I can’t actually take any credit for. The Yoga Sutras humble me and remind me of this.”

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. “The most exquisite writing you can find. I read this just to remember what the Holy Grail of writing looks and feels like.”

Picks from Clay Shirky, social media theorist

It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by danah boyd. “danah boyd is one of the first scholars to be both an expert on youth and online environments, and to have been a youth in those environments herself. This inside/outside perspective comes through on every page of It’s Complicated, a keenly observed and deeply felt look at the things adolescents do and don’t understand about their media use.”

Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread—The Lessons from New Science by Alex Pentland. “Pentland has done more to demystifying human behavior in the wild than anyone else in the last decade. Social Physics describes his studies of individual and group behavior, gleaned from data ranging from cell phone tracking to reading entire databases of online action. One key finding: humans are better off if we’re connected, but not too connected.”

Everything Is Obvious (Once You Know the Answer): How Common Sense Fails Us by Duncan J. Watts. “Watts revolutionized the study of networks by describing the Small Worlds network pattern, where large networks of anything—cells, computers, people—tend to be clusters of clusters of clusters, connected by a only a few nodes. In Everything Is Obvious, he looks at a key effect of this pattern: the viral spread of any idea passes through so many random links that even a perfect understanding of the past does not equip us to predict the future.”

Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices from the Internet Underground by Emily Parker. “Parker reports from China, Russia and Cuba on the effects of internet use on political consciousness. Through a series of portraits and observations, she describes how the attitudes that often accompany internet use can alter the psychology of the user, including especially the powerful realization: ‘I am not alone.’”

Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions by Paul Mason. “Three years ago—before Mubarak stepped down, before anyone #Occupied anything—Mason wrote ’20 Reasons It’s Kicking Off Everywhere,’a series of prescient observations in essay form that helps explain everything from Spain’s Indignados to Russia’s Pussy Riot to Turkey’s Gezi Park uprising to the Walmart protests in the United States. In this expanded and updated book, Mason lays out much of the background to the global protest movements; the chapter ‘Nobody Saw It Coming’ alone is worth the price of admission.”

Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust by Pierre Rosanvallon. “One of the two best books explaining the deep structure of the current wave of protests, even though it was published before they started. (The other is Domination and the Arts of Resistance, below.) It rescues the hidden history of democracy, documenting all the ways that the citizens’ power to observe, limit or reject government action become part of the democratic repertoire before the right to vote, and looks at the way that coalitions of the unwilling shape national landscapes.”

Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts by James C. Scott. “Also written well before the Sidi Bouzid uprising in Tunisia, Scott lays out the ways that even populations that seem to be under the total dominance of an oppressor find ways to discuss their discontent with the status quo, often in a kind of coded protest. Revolutionary moments are marked by the sudden appearance of the long-lived but long-hidden transcript into the public sphere.”

Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution by Andrew Boyd. ”Unlike the other books I’ve chosen, this is a reference work. It is a pattern language for 21st-century protests, a linked documentation of the tactics, principles, theories, case studies, and practitioners—Banner Hang, Ethical Spectacle, the Yes Men— that make up much of the current repertoire of insurgent political action.”

Picks from Uzoamaka Maduka, founder of The American Reader

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce by Slavoj Žižek. “Slavoj Žižek is regularly, and hysterically, misunderstood by his critics. Read this carefully and seriously, and you will leave with a new, radically informed understanding of our present political, economic and cultural crises, and exactly what must be done to survive them. In this book, Žižek puts all of Western culture and politics on the psychoanalyst’s couch, and what he finds is incredible.”

The Mark of the Sacred by Jean-Pierre Dupuy. “By a pioneer of cognitive science and one of the leading philosophers of science and technology today, this is an incisive and critical survey of recent developments in those fields. It asks the provocative question, ‘Is secular reason separable from religion?’”

The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir. “This is by no means an easy book; in fact it is a fairly devastating portrait of three women seen as their lives unspool, and a painful primer on the social costs of being a satisfied woman. Still, though it seems like a major downer, I read it with passion and pleasure, and it is the sort of advice a woman needs but seldom gets—or gets too late.”

Primitive Mentor by Dean Young. “Dean Young is one of the best poets America has produced, and this collection is a masterpiece. It’s also appropriately titled: this collection accompanies you as would a soulmate through the more primitive and compelling dimensions of the human soul.”

Leaving the Sea: Stories by Ben Marcus. “Ben Marcus is the contemporary American master of the short story. His latest collection contains rare, gem-like fables that are at once disquieting and luminous. You do not know the possibilities, oddities and mysteries of our American language until you experience it in fiction of this caliber and ambition.”

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier. “A smart corrective to our digital optimism. Mr. Lanier shows us how and why we make ourselves stupider in order to make technology seem smarter.”

Wise Blood: A Novel by Flannery O’Connor. “Someone else has described it best: ‘Focused on the story of Hazel Motes, a 22-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate fate, this tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings and wisdoms gives us one of the most riveting characters in 20th-century American fiction.’”

Seize the Day by Saul Bellow. “A struggle between father and son doubles as an unyielding and brilliant portrayal of American optimism, speculation, and desire. This is a classic of American literature written by one of the giants of our tradition.”

Picks from Amanda Palmer, musician

The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde. “Lewis Hyde wrote this incredible history of human gift exchanges back in the early 1980s. Starting with our misunderstanding of the term “Indian giver,” he opens up treasure troves of myths, religious rituals and other long-standing exchanges that go far beyond money. He schools hard about how the act of making art, and the art we make, is a gift that must stay in motion in order to function and serve humanity. It’s just beautiful.”

Dropping Ashes on the Buddha by Seung Sahn. “I read this on my first trip to Australia, where I was taking a crack at street performing for the Adelaide Festival. This was the first book that really drove home the Buddhist philosophy that I try to adhere to. It’s a series of fantastic (and sometimes funny) letters written from Seung Sahn, a Korean Zen master who founded the Cambridge Zen Center, to his students.”

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. “I started losing my memory a few summers ago—I mean, REALLY LOSING IT. I couldn’t remember one night what a CHERRY was called. I waltzed into the local bookstore and asked if they had any books on memory, so I could maybe get a grasp on what the hell was happening to me. Somehow this book landed in my hands. It changed the way I thought about memory, the mind and thinking, and I’ve since gifted this book to at least a dozen people.” (Watch Foer’s TED Talk, “Feats of memory anyone can do.”)

A Collaboration with Nature by Andy Goldsworthy. “This is a book of art made from nature that you cannot help but fall in love with. I found it on a coffee table at my friend Jason Webley’s house and I couldn’t help but to stop everything I was doing and pore over the pages. The process that this guy uses to create his works will wrestle your soul open—it’s just immaculate.”

My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit. “A deeply personal account of patriotism and national identity, and an examination of how a country’s citizenry sometimes struggles to balance heritage and tradition with modernity and the contemporary.”

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg. “Written by a new friend, this book is an important reminder that the very best organizations always set the conditions for personal success, where each of us can accomplish and contribute the very best of ourselves.” (Watch Sheryl Sandberg’s TED Talk, “So we leaned in … now what?”)

Picks from Blood Orange, musician

Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in CompositionbyIannis Xenakis. “After fleeing Greece during World War II, Xenakis became an illegal immigrant in Paris. He got a job as an engineer and architect. From there, his interest in music sprung and he applied the techniques of architecture to his musical compositions. With breakthrough scores shattering any preconceived notion about music and its links to math, this book is a prime collection of theories and techniques from one of the greatest avant-garde composers to have ever been.”

The Philosopher’s Touch: Sartre, Nietzsche and Barthes at the Piano by François Noudelmann. “Noudelmann writes in-depth about these three philosophers, and draws links between their piano playing and their theories and writing. I find it especially interesting how their taste in regards to what they said they listened to differed from what they actually enjoyed playing themselves. Everyone has guilty pleasures!”

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Room by Jo Applin. “Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room was an artistic success in the ’60s when it first shook the art world, and again with her most recent exhibition in New York City in 2013. Kusama, whose work deals with the repetition and the comfort within that, has her work expertly chronicled and analyzed in this book.”

Image-Music-Text by Roland Barthes. “Simply put, it’s three essays from the renowned philosopher, including the classic ‘Death of an Author,’ dealing with the ongoing question of separating the art from its author.”

Last Night on Earth by Bill T. Jones. “The biography of Florida-born, New York-adopted choreographer/director/composer Bill T. Jones. Who, along with his troupe the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, revolutionized the dance world as well as theatre itself in the ’70s and ’80s, culminating in his masterpiece, the musical Fela!”

Feelings Are Facts: A Life by Yvonne Rainer. “A biography of the San Francisco choreographer and poet. It gives insight to her groundbreaking piece, ‘Trio A (1966).’”

White Girls by Hilton Als. “Critic/writer Hilton Als has written one of the best books on race and gender I have ever read—it’s part biography, part essay. This book will change your perception regardless of where you stood beforehand.”

Monster in a Box by Spalding Gray. “A game-changing monologist, Spalding Gray is an inspiration to me. He told stories of his own life as an actor living in New York with brutal honesty, confidence and an abundance of neurotic attitude. In this meta-monologue, he talks about trying to write his first fiction book, which actually was about his life, and the many things he did to avoid writing it. For extended reading, you can seek out the novel itself, Impossible Vacation.”

Trench Town Rock (Lost Roads Series; No 40)by Kamau Brathwaite. “Recommended by my friend, writer Jenna Sauers, this truly incredible book bounces along in a language that sounds like a song you’ve never heard before, yet needed to listen to all along. It’s poetry as well as African studies. Brathwaite takes you on such a jarring journey from the first page that it is almost impossible to put this book down.”

Say no more, thought the impatient billionaire in the audience at the TED conference, who found the speaker’s voice as whiny and irritating as his ideas were inspiring and consciousness-shifting. He already knew the part of the speech that was going to stay with him: a mirror up to the Earth — amazing, unbelievable. Tricky but doable. He got it. Let’s make it.”

So begins BJ Novak’s charmingly absurdist story about a man who misconstrues a big idea shared at a TED conference, taking a famous Shakespeare line as a call-to-action. In “The Impatient Billionaire and the Mirror for the Earth,” one of the 64 vignettes featured in Novak’s debut book, One More Thing, a man short on time but long on money decides to build a giant, full-length mirror for the planet, so that everyone can watch themselves and others. Three years, and billions of dollars later, the mirror is built. And the world is never the same again.

This quirky, introspective story can be found on page 58 of the book, which Novak started writing to tie together his unexplored story ideas after nine seasons as a writer, actor and producer for The Office. At times side-splittingly hilarious and at others thought-provoking, together the stories in the book offer a gentle meditation on life’s biggest questions. (Don’t miss the book’s wonderful trailer, above, which features Novak and his Office co-writer Mindy Kaling recreating the aura of literary pretense of the French New Wave.)

We caught up with Novak on his book tour to discuss writing, inspiration and what world-changing idea he would share on the TED stage. Below, an edited transcript of that conversation.

The book is called One More Thing. Do you see this as an extension of your earlier work, or is this new, uncharted territory for you?

This is new. I’ve done many different things, mainly The Office. But even on The Office, I did many different things and I never quite had a creative home base — something that I thought was, first and foremost, my voice and my style, what I wanted to say, the type of jokes I wanted to make, and stories I wanted to tell. I never had that. I’m a standup comedian, but my standup has never become that personal. For me, this book became the extra things I wanted to say.

So this book is really a new beginning for me. I had been burnt out from all these years in The Office — I started there when I was 24 and was there for eight years. So it really was where all my ideas went for a long time, and I loved it, but I didn’t know where my own voice started and where the show’s voice stopped. I didn’t exactly know the difference between something I would write and something Paul Lieberstein would write, or Greg Daniels, or Mindy Kaling — though Mindy has a very distinct voice.

After I left The Office, I had accumulated all these ideas over the years that I really loved and believed in, but didn’t have an outlet for. They didn’t fit in the Dunder Mifflin universe, and they didn’t go together into a single screenplay. So this was my way to reclaim my voice, to be true to all these ideas that I loved and put them down on paper. And I came to love it even more than I expected.

Do you see a theme running throughout the book — is there a central idea that you’re exploring?

Yeah. I wrote it with the intention of it being very scattered and jagged. I thought that would be the most fun type of book to read. Everything was a surprise, compared to what had come before it. A very long one might be next to a very short one, a very silly one might be next to a more serious one, one that takes place in the distant past and then one that’s very present day. I love that, and I thought I would purposefully have no theme at all, and that would be the theme.

But when I looked at it in the end, I realized what had been on my mind. Inadvertently, all these themes had come up again and again. The main one is this idea that perfection is just one or two clicks away, and if we only had one more thing, everything would be what we wanted it to be, what we needed it to be. I realized that beautiful illusion that we are just one thing away from perfection — from transcendence, from what we want — came up again and again in the stories. Whether it’s the hare, who just needs to rematch the tortoise and everything will be okay, or it’s Sophia, who just thinks she can always just get one more conversation with the man she loves.

The elusive search for perfection is a theme that’s definitely present in “The Impatient Billionaire” — it’s a story of someone trying to find the one big thing he can contribute to society, but he doesn’t quite understand it. The story plays with misinterpretation — the billionaire makes an old saying the spark for his world-changing idea.

Right! Absolutely. There could probably be a TED Talk just about that — misinterpretations that led to breakthroughs.

What’s the story behind this story in particular?

I had a real affection for two things. For this sort of Steve Jobs, stop-at-nothing relentless pursuer of greatness. But even more so, for the guys who try to be like him, and maybe don’t understand everything as well as they wish they did. I don’t really know any Steve Jobs-es, but I know a lot of people who have read the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs. So this is really about a guy who wants to be like that, but he’s a little impatient and a little blustery. And yet that kind of person often forces his way into the realm of greatness too.

What was fun for me about the story was taking this situation that’s easy to satirize — an impatient billionaire without much understanding of science and metaphors or the patience to learn — and just wants greatness right away, on demand. Sometimes that is the important thing — those people often just elbow their way into greatness. I really like the idea that I would start with this satirical figure and portray him with real affection and mercy.

Would you say you’re a fan of TED?

Yeah, everyone is.

Do you have a favorite talk?

I love Tavi Gevinson’s TEDx talk on youth and positivity. I loved that someone 16 years old could use the standards of what makes something excellent, combined with a voice that could only be yours at that age, and make something relevant.

Yeah, her talk is great. And if you had gave a TED Talk, what would it be about?

Is this my invitation?

Maybe…

Well, I’ve always wanted to give a talk. It’s very important on my white-person resume. What would my TED Talk be? I don’t know if I’m an expert in anything. So I guess I’m not qualified yet. But if I had to give a TED talk, I think there’s something that I’ve been able to learn on The Office about the integration of comedy and honesty and emotion. I really learned it from Steve Carell and from Greg Daniels and the tone they set among the cast and the writers. I think we helped establish a zone in which you’re never really thinking about whether something is funny or not, because you’re invested in the emotions, so the comedy takes you by surprise. And I would love to investigate that zone between where honesty — emotional honesty — turns into a nexus for comedy and plot. I think The Office was very much standing on the shoulders of shows like The Sopranos. If I had to give a TED Talk, and I had to think of something that I knew about, that’s definitely something that I’ve learned and would love to investigate more.

You shared live readings of your stories as you were writing this book. How did performing your stories on a stage help you hone your voice as a writer?

It’s been extremely important to having my voice evolve, and it’s been, more than anything, my inspiration. When I know that I’m going to read a story live, in front of 100 people, standing alone on a stage, I work much, much, much harder than I would if I could just email it to a friend who might write back, “Great story! Brilliant!” Because I know that I’m going to have to stand there for every boring line, and every lackluster detail. Every flaw I’m going to feel in my bones, standing in front of people. That makes me work so hard. And every success in my story, every laugh, every surprise, I’m going to reap all the benefits for too. I’m going to hear laughter live, I’m going to see people smile with surprise. So all those things make it extremely personal and really motivated my writing. I learn much more in the hours before I was about to read the stories than I did even on stage, because it was just that anticipation making it personal.

That energy definitely comes out in the book — it has a very conversational voice. So you signed a two-book deal, what can we expect to see in the next book?

I’m going to take a little bit of time first but I would love to write stories that went in even more ambitious directions. Maybe fewer stories, with more twists and depth to them. But I’m not sure exactly yet. Right now I have this children’s book, The Book With No Pictures, that I’m now focusing on. I’m finalizing that.

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At TED2014, astronaut Chris Hadfield and journalist Jon Moollem will give talks, and Sting will perform.

TED2014, our 30th anniversary conference, is less than a month away! If you’re counting the days like we are, get a head start by reading some of the insightful and compelling books by the groundbreaking thinkers who will speak in Vancouver.

Books from speakers in Session 1, “Liftoff”

Being Digital, by Nicholas Negroponte. This 1995 bestseller grew out of Negroponte’s column exploring technology and explaining new inventions. (New at the time, that is. It’ll make for the perfect nostalgic read.)

Climate Change: Picturing the Science, by Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe. Schmidt, a climate scientist, teamed up with Wolfe, a photographer, to illustrate the huge impact of shifting weather patterns via visuals of sinking villages, shrinking glaciers, and more.

Business @ the Speed of Thought, by Bill Gates. In his book, Gates, who will speak with his wife and business partner Melinda, gives a prescient analysis of the ways in which technology can aid businesses, and its potential to transform the business landscape.

Broken Music, by Sting. The singer-songwriter began penning his memoir when he turned 50. It gives a deep look into his past, from his childhood to the beginning of his success as a musician.

Also speaking at TED2014—David Epstein, Jennifer Senior and Andrew Solomon.

Books from speakers in Session 7, “Why?”

Evelyn Evelyn, by Jason Webley, Amanda Palmer and Cynthia von Buhler. Two of this book’s author will be at TED2014—Webley will perform during session 7, while Palmer (who gave an incredible talk at last year’s conference) will appear during a special TED All-Stars list. It’s the illustrated story of a pair of conjoined twins’ story.

The Sports Gene, by David Epstein. What makes a star athlete? Epstein investigates the classic nature-versus-nurture debate as it applies to sports.

Ant Encounters, by Deborah Gordon. Gordon, an ecologist, explains how ant colonies function (thrive!) without any centralized control or hierarchy.

Books from speakers in Session 11, “Unstress”

All Joy and No Fun, by Jennifer Senior. Senior, a journalist, delves into the reality of how having children changes parents’ lives, particularly in light of the changes family structures have undergone in recent decades.

Far from the Tree, by Andrew Solomon. Solomon tells the stories of families with children who have Down syndrome, schizophrenia, deafness, and other qualities that make them exceptional.

Gabby, by Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly. Congresswoman Giffords was the victim of an assassination attempt in 2011. In this book, she and her husband, Kelly, tell the story of her brain injury and painstaking process of recovery.

Mark Burnett is a security consultant who has spent decades examining how to harden computer systems against attack. In one study titled “Perfect Passwords,” he accumulated and analyzed more than two million user passwords (assembled everywhere from hacker list dumps to Google). The most common, unfortunately, showed how far we have to go in our personal approach to cybersecurity. Yes, the most popular password used to protect our computers was “password.” The second most popular? “123456.”

The issues of responsibility in cybersecurity are, in many ways, much like other issues of public and private safety. The government has a role in providing standards and enforcing regulation, and the industry has a responsibility to meet them, but the chain of responsibility does not stop there. The individual citizen must also play their part. Take the example of seat belts. The government created a requirement that all cars have them; many car companies, in fact, go even further and try to separate themselves from competitors with their greater safety features. But, at the end of the day, the individual still has to buckle up.

When it comes to cybersecurity, most people are not being targeted by APTs, Stuxnet, or other high-end threats. We are, however, part of an ecosystem where we have responsibilities both to ourselves and to the broader community. As one cybersecurity expert put it, “Most of us are not dealing with serious national security type issues, but our failure to show good sense can create a lot of noise that bad guys can hide in.” Indeed, even if there are bad guys directly after us, there are still simple measures that can be taken. The Australian Defence Signals Directorate (equivalent of the US National Security Agency) found in one study that just a few key actions — “whitelisting” (i.e., allowing only authorized software to run on a computer or network), very rapid patching of applications and of operating system vulnerabilities, and restricting the number of people with administrator access to a system — would prevent 85 percent of targeted intrusions from succeeding.

The biggest change we can make at the individual level, though, is to change our attitude toward security. The Internet is certainly not the scary, awful place it is often painted by too many cybersecurity reports. But nor is it an innocuous realm. Indeed, one study found that roughly two-thirds of cybercrime victims were simply unaware of the risks in the realm. As the cartoon character Pogo would put it, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

A shift in attitude is important not just in our own personal roles but also in the roles we play inside any organizations we belong to, especially when in leadership positions. Steven Bucci, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, illustrates this point with a story of a US Air Force base commander in the 2000s (a period before the military took cybersecurity seriously). The commander forced his IT people to give him a one-digit password for his classified system. He told them he was “too important” to be slowed down by having to type multiple digits. “In five minutes after that happened, everybody on the base knew two things: one, their boss was a complete idiot. Two, that security wasn’t important.”

Accepting that there are risks and threats doesn’t mean there is nothing that we can do. Rather, it emphasizes the second fundamental attitude change, recognizing the need to educate ourselves and then protect ourselves. In many ways, this education is requisite for the twenty-first century and should be taking place within the schools (we teach kids everything from basic hygiene to driver’s education, why not also cyber hygiene to protect themselves?). As technologist Ben Hammersly has written, the general state of cyber education is “shameful,” from the primary school level on up, and helps explain some of the ignorance displayed even at the highest levels of media and government. “How many policy debates have you heard, from security to copyright reform, that have been predicated on technical ignorance? This is a threat to national prosperity itself far more severe than any terrorist organization could ever be. It remains, in too many circles, a matter of pride not to be able to program the video recorder. That’s pathetic.”

In the absence of formal education, it is imperative on all of us to learn the basics and act appropriately. And, just as in other areas, this responsibility is both a personal one and a parental one. If your children are online (and they are!), they too need to know how to act appropriately, recognize risks, and protect themselves. Imparting an ethic of stewardship (that this is their way not only to look after themselves, but also to help keep the Internet safe for others) is a better strategy than trying to convince them through fear factors.

What follows is certainly not the exhaustive list of all that you can do to better your cybersecurity but simply some of the key steps — from entry to equipment to behavior — that any smart and responsible user should be thinking about. Or, as one retired army officer responded when asked what was the most important thing people could do for cybersecurity, “Stop being so damned stupid on computers.”

Access and Passwords: Update passwords regularly and always use “strong” passwords that are both lengthy and mix numbers, letters, and signs. Never use common words and phrases.

As Wired magazine explained of the problem of using passwords like “12345” or “password,” “If you use a dumb password like that, getting into your account is trivial. Free software tools with names like Cain and Abel or John the Ripper automate password-cracking to such an extent that, very literally, any idiot can do it. All you need is an Internet connection and a list of common passwords — which, not coincidentally, are readily available online, often in database-friendly formats.”

Don’t share these passwords and don’t use the same passwords repeatedly across your various accounts (as then a hacker can “daisy chain” to connect across all your online personas). One study of hacked websites found that 49 percent of people had reused usernames and passwords between hacked sites. This is also why many organizations require you to change your password regularly. It not only minimizes risk, in case your password was already compromised, but it minimizes the likelihood that an irresponsible user has used his work password to, say, buy shoes, and now that password is compromised.

At the very least, your e-mail passwords should be strong and unique, since many web applications allow you to reset many account details by e-mail. You may also want to consider a “password manager.” This application generates random, secure passwords for all the sites you need, and enters them automatically. Modern password manager applications work across platforms and devices, requiring you to only have to remember one password for the tool itself — just make sure that’s a good one!

Eric Schmidt of Google calls this new book an “essential read.”

Given how many accounts also allow you to reset a password by answering some personal question, never use any personal information that could be found online to answer these questions. You may think that no one could guess your mother’s maiden name or your first grade teacher, but often that is findable with a quick web search of you and your friends and family’s social media accounts. So-called “socialing” was responsible for 37 percent of the total data stolen in one government study of cybercrime. Indeed, it was through public information that a rather unethical teenager was able to gain access to Sarah Palin’s personal Yahoo! e-mail account. Many suggest using counterintuitive information to confuse a system. What’s your mother’s maiden name? Answer your first pet’s name.

Even after following all this advice, passwords still only offer a single line of defense, vulnerable to a compromised server or a brute-force guessing attack. There is a growing effort to protect more valuable information and accounts with what is known as “multi-factor authentication.”

Multi-factor authentication operates under the idea that entry doesn’t just have to be allowed because of something the user knows, like a password. Their identity can also be verified by something the user has (like a smart card), where the user is, and/or something the user is, such as a biometric characteristic like fingerprints. This seems an onerous requirement, but has actually become the way that banks control access to automated teller machines (ATMs). The bank card is the physical object the customer has, while the code is the second verifying information that the customer knows. Similarly, many e-mail programs like Gmail can restrict access to computers in certain physical locations or require secondary codes pushed out to users’ mobile phones. The security here comes from multiple channels — even if your computer has been compromised, if your cell phone hasn’t, then a text message serves as a second layer of security.

None of these are perfect. Even one of the top multi-factor defenses used by the Pentagon was cracked when hackers broke into the company that manufactured the physical tokens that provided users a random, algorithmically determined secondary password. But that doesn’t mean the effort is not worthwhile. The goal is to shift the password from being the first and last line of defense into part of a multi-layered series of hoops and hurdles far more difficult for a hacker to go through.

Systems and Equipment: Cyberthreats are constantly evolving, but the reality is that many breaches do not happen through new zero days. The Conficker worm, one of the most successful pieces of malware in history, for example, spread to several million computers through a vulnerability in Windows that was widely known and for which patches were available online. Such threats are easily defeated by simply keeping operating systems, browsers, and other critical software constantly up to date. The fact that security updates and patches are freely available from major companies makes it all the easier.

Many of the more targeted cyberthreats utilize wireless access to gain entry, sometimes from within the same building, other times from nearby parking lots, or via crowds, and so on. Restricting unwarranted access is useful, but can only go so far. Indeed, some of the sneakier threats have even utilized remote operated helicopters to get inside buildings to tap their wireless networks. For this reason, it’s also important to secure your wireless network with the best available protection, including encrypting the traffic from your device to the router. Note that many popular wireless encryption schemes have been broken, so be sure to use the most recent. If you are using an unencrypted wireless network in a public place, be careful what you’re doing. Any activity that isn’t encrypted through SSL (the little lock icon in your browser) is easily intercepted by anyone nearby, with free and easy-to-use software.

Finally, given the likely threats, it is important to back up any valuable information, whether it’s your financial statements or those cute pictures of your toddler girl blowing bubbles. This should be done both in external networks, but ideally also in a physical hard drive set aside just for that kind of important information.

A good rule is that if you can’t bear to lose it, then prepare to lose it.

Behavior: Most threats enter through some kind of vulnerability created by the users themselves. Like the three little pigs, don’t open the door before checking. If your system has an option to automatically download attachments, turn it off and instead always use the highest privacy and security settings to limit the exposure of your systems. Never open links that come from users you don’t know or who seem fishy (such as varying in spelling or domain), nor should you open attachments unless you can verify the source. And, just like with candy, never accept hardware from untrusted sources.

Wherever you can, operate in a mentality based on the multi-factor authentication. If you receive a message asking you to send important or personal information, verify the sender through other means, including that antique technique of picking up the phone and calling your mom to know exactly why she wants your bank account number. Even if the e-mail is not from her, she’ll be glad you called, and you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble.

This is even more important as mobile devices become more and more common. Links sent via texts are just as likely a threat as those in an e-mail. Even if you think you know the sender, it is not a good idea to click on unknown links. Similarly, apps should only be downloaded from trusted marketplaces. Social media further compound this threat, where we have become accustomed to shortened link services such as tinyurl.com. As we were preparing the final version of this manuscript, someone we didn’t know commented on a Twitter exchange between the two of us, trying to steer us to a shortened link. Using a URL unshortener that checks the redirect for us, we discovered that the participant in our discussion was keen to share with us a very long string of obfuscated (almost certainly malicious) code. Common sense would also have worked: this Twitter account had zero followers and was not following anyone, but was sharing links with several other high-profile Twitter users with abandon. Bottom line, the best behavior is not to be afraid, but rather wary.

Just as wearing your seat belt doesn’t mean you’ll not be hurt when you enter a car, such steps are no guarantee to cybersecurity. They are, however, recognition that we can all contribute to the solution while better protecting ourselves and the Internet as a whole.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/p-w-singer-on-cybersecurity-how-to-protect-yourself/feed/6PW-Singer-at-TEDtedblogguestP.W. Singer spoke at TED2009 on the future of war. His new book is a dep dive on cybersecurity.Eric Schmidt of Google calls this new book an "essential read."The best way to get a book deal? Write a story 19 million people want to readhttp://ideas.ted.com/beth-reekles-teen-fiction/
http://ideas.ted.com/beth-reekles-teen-fiction/#commentsFri, 03 Jan 2014 20:00:32 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=85180[…]]]>

17-year-old Beth Reekles had a really good year. She published two books; appeared on national TV; sold the film rights for her first book, The Kissing Booth; graduated from high school and started college; and earned a spot on TIME’s list of the most influential teens of 2013, alongside household names like Malia Obama and Justin Bieber. And still she found time to watch five seasons of Gossip Girl.

How did such a young woman get so far so fast? When Beth was 15, living at home in Wales, she wrote a novel (“the kind of book I wanted to read”) and put it up on the story-sharing website Wattpad. 19 million views later, she won a three-book contract with a young adult division at Random House to publish that first book, The Kissing Booth, and two more, including the recently published Rolling Dice. That kind of transition from self-publishing to traditional publishing is rare — but her true-to-life stories of teen romance, sans vampires and werewolves, must have tapped a void that needed filling.

This much-in-demand writer has developed a routine that helps her stay focused. Beth likes to write alone with her computer and a cup of tea. (She avoids writing with others in the room, because she hates the idea that someone might be reading over her shoulder.) If she’s feeling blocked, she turns on background music — such as the soundtrack to Doctor Who or Pirates of the Caribbean — to help her feel more creative. “Something emotive and exciting,” she says. She experiments with form as well — on her Wattpad page, you can find short stories, chapters and novellas, including the holiday one-off “Deck the Halls.”

She’s a freshman at the University of Exeter now and plans to major in physics. She’s busy preparing for January exams and working on her third book. This summer, when classes end, she’s excited to spend her summer typing away, possibly working on a sequel to The Kissing Booth.

We talked to Beth via email about self-publishing, J.K. Rowling, and letting go of bad reviews. Our first question:

What inspired you to write a novel at 15? Here’s Beth —

I was looking for a high school romance that didn’t involve a vampire or werewolf – every teen romance seemed to have a paranormal element, and I was sick of that. So when I couldn’t find the kind of book I wanted to read, I decided to write it instead. That’s how I ended up writing The Kissing Booth.

What did you think when Random House called you up and said, “Hey, want to write a few more for us?”

I was thrilled! I’d thought about traditionally publishing my books, but I didn’t think it would actually ever happen, and certainly not like that! Sometimes I still can’t believe it.

A lot of people in the publishing world are wary of self-publishing. What is your take on it?

Self-publishing is making writing something that a lot more people take seriously now. It gives a lot of new and younger writers the opportunity to try and put their work out there quickly and easily, so it’s encouraging more and more people to write.

What are you writing now?

Right now I’m working on my third book for Random House, which is going to be another young-adult romance, called Out of Tune.

How do you come up with a new character or story? What’s your process?

I usually get the ideas for characters before I come up with a story. My characters seem to have lives of their own that I have to try and put down on paper. I’ve never been any good at planning stories; I often go with the flow and don’t know how the story will turn out until I’ve finished it!

Which authors do you really admire?

J.K. Rowling has always been one of my role models. I’ve loved the Harry Potter series since I began reading it as a child, and when I read about how she persevered despite all the rejection letters, it’s really encouraging and inspiring to me as a writer.

Are there any responses you’ve gotten from fans that have really stuck with you?

I get so many messages from young girls telling me that I’ve inspired them to write, or that they don’t usually read but tried my book and loved it. Those are the ones that really stick with me. They’re very humbling messages to receive, and they always make my day! It’s brilliant to hear that I’ve encouraged other girls to read and write more.

What is one thing you know that you wish everyone knew?

One bad piece of criticism can make you feel like everything you’re doing is a waste of time, but you really need to put it in perspective. Take note of all the good things people are saying!

]]>http://ideas.ted.com/beth-reekles-teen-fiction/feed/26bethreeklesblogheaderREDonadia519BethReeklesBlogHeaderYour holiday reading list: Great novels by 2013 TED speakershttp://blog.ted.com/holiday-reading-list-great-novels-by-2013-ted-speakers/
http://blog.ted.com/holiday-reading-list-great-novels-by-2013-ted-speakers/#commentsMon, 23 Dec 2013 20:00:28 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=85050[…]]]>Packing up for your holiday trip home? For the downtime from eggnog, food and family, consider bringing a couple of these excellent novels from TED speakers whose talks were published this year.

Karen Thompson Walker’sdebut novel, The Age of Miracles, quickly took off when it was published last year. Walker imagines a world in which the rotation of the earth progressively slows down, with serious consequences. In her TED Talk, Walker discusses the creative potential that fear holds. After all, what is The Age of Miracles if not a beautifully written nightmare?.

Babyji, by Abha Dawesar, is a coming-of-age story that follows Anamika Sharma, a student in 1980s Delhi. The 2005 novel, which won the Barbara Gittings Prize in Literature/Stonewall Award from the American Library Association and a Lambda Literary Prize, “achieves an impressive balance between moral inquiry and decadent pleasure,” Publisher’s Weeklydeclared. Watch Dawesar’s talk on how technology has fractured our experience of time..

WhenPico Iyer published his first novel, Cuba and the Night, in 1996, he’d already written three travel books. Set in Havana, this novel shows the depth of his travel-writing experience, offering what The New York Times called “atmospheric and haunting glimpses of life in the Cuban countryside.” Watch Iyer’s talk on the meaning of home..